In January, I wrote about my BlueAnt X5 Bluetooth headset, which I’ve been very happy with.
The headset comes with an “audio streamer” dongle, which comes with an audio jack you can plug into your PC or MP3 player, and it will stream the audio from the jack over Bluetooth to the headset, which means you can use your headset with devices that don’t support Bluetooth. The audio streamer dongle comes with a USB port on the side, which is used for charging the built-in battery.
Well, today, I plugged in my audio streamer into my PC to charge it as usual. However, I also accidentally held the button on the side of the dongle for a long time while plugging it in. Interestingly, the LED status light blinked quite rapidly, and a Bluetooth popup on my computer came up: “Device rillian has been made connectable.”
Excitedly, I checked lsusb, and indeed, the audio streamer was acting as an ordinary Bluetooth dongle!
jeremy@rillian:~$ lsusb Bus 001 Device 016: ID 0a12:0001 Cambridge Silicon Radio, Ltd Bluetooth Dongle (HCI mode)
When I had plugged it in other times, it had never shown up as a dongle, i.e. it was only ever in a “charging” mode with no functionality.
So, if you have a BlueAnt X5, and want a free Bluetooth dongle, here’s all you have to do:
- Make sure the audio streamer is turned off. (Remove the battery to be sure.)
- Hold down the button on the side while plugging the dongle (the audio streamer, not the actual headset) into your PC (not into the standalone wall charger).
- When the lights stop flashing, let go of the button. You should now see your Bluetooth dongle pop up on your computer. (Windows users may need drivers.)
That’s all there is! Free Bluetooth dongle!
Awesome post. I was just about to spend money on a new dongle. My X5 headset died (result of me trying to fix a bent detent button a bit aggressively). So I was shopping for new headset and was going to get a multifunction dongle. Might still need one but am willing to wait now to try this with new headset (settled for a Motorola S305).